Monthly Archives: January 2012

What’s “a force for good” in the eyes of a BBC World Service journalist? The link takes you to this article about a Vermont-based Super PAC called “Americans For a Better Tomorrow, Today”. Here’s what they stand for:

The group wants to highlight the issues and values brought into focus by the Occupy movement, including progressive tax policies, clean energy development, the protection of collective bargaining rights and a system that doesn’t routinely graduate college students with $100,000 of student loan debt.

Lefty values = force for good. The BBC’s coverage of this year’s presidential election is going to be a doozy, isn’t it?

The BBC really is the last bastion of defence for bloated Public Sector finances. Biased BBC contributor Alan notes;

‘Public sector workers will be “dramatically” better off in retirement and receive significantly higher wages than those in the private sector.’

Not so, suggests the BBC.

Fascinating example of BBC deliberately down playing good news for the public sector employees and choosing words very carefully to give the facts but in a way that almost reverses their true meaning.

Regarding the IFS’ latest report on pension reforms….

For the BBC the reforms reduce pensions and increase working life for all…..

‘The government’s latest public sector pension changes will make “little or no difference” to their long-term cost, an economic think-tank has said. However, it points out that the earlier decision to shift the inflation link for pension increases has substantially reduced costs and expectations.Unions point out that, overall, public workers must pay more and work longer. The report said that lower earners in the public sector were better protected that higher earners.’

Contrast that with the Telegraph’s report in which it reveals public sector workers will not only get higher pensions than now but also get over 8% higher pay than their equivalents in the private sector...and that it is only higher paid workers in the public sector who will see a reduction in pensions…..

‘Public sector workers will be “dramatically” better off in retirement and receive significantly higher wages than those in the private sector despite government attempts to scale back the generosity of their pay and pensions, ministers have been warned. The institute’s findings will call into question the widespread disruption caused by trade union protests over the treatment of public sector workers. “In general, lower earners in the public sector will actually get a more generous pension as a result of the recently announced reforms. That is, they will be able to retire at age 65 with a higher annual pension than they would receive under current arrangements. Conversely, higher earners are likely to lose out.” ‘

Of course this is the BBC in which a gloating Evan Davis tried to claim that RBS boss, Stephen Hester, refused his bonus because of Labour plans to have a Common’s vote on the subject…..where was his proof of that decision making?….more likely it was Hester’s wife who made him refuse it! Let’s also not forget that Hester (who is overpaid like all these people) received over £4 million in 2008 and £6 million in 2009…..wasn’t that when Labour was running things?…how soon they forget!

‘Mr Hester’s huge potential bonuses come on top of a total pay package of £35.54million since joining the bank in 2008. Brought in to turn the ailing bank around after a £45billion taxpayer bailout, Mr Hester was handed £4.99million in restricted shares, forgoing pay and bonuses. The next year, 2009, his pay package was worth £6.9million, and in 2010 that rose to £8.16million.’

“Sean Coughlan,BBC education correspondent, reporting here on the BBC web page today about a Twitter-linked session of the Education Select Committee: “… when Mr Gove was asked about a campaign against turning Downhills Primary School in north London into an academy, he accused the protesters of being linked to the Socialist Workers Party – and described them as the “enemies of promise”.

Mr Coughlan interposes his own opinion about this exchange. He writes: “But when #AskGove responded, it was in the old-fashioned language of right and left, haranguing the Haringey campaigners.”

On the BBC, Socialist Workers party argues; Mr Gove harangues; Gove acts like old-fashioned rightist when he argues back. SWP are just running a campaign.

Condemnation of Gove, but zero investigation by Mr Coughlan of the crux of this story, which any newsman should go after: is Mr Gove’s complaint that the discussion, and genuine parents’ views have been hi-jacked by the extreme left SWP, justifiable? “

Day in Day Out, some within the BBC produce a relentless drumbeat to accompany the narrative that the Coalition is wrong in everything that it does. Take these consecutive items ran on Today this morning. First up is the a report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) which claims that the government’s public sector pension reforms are unlikely to save money in the long term. It looks like we just have keep finding the unaffordable. Then comes the item that the government’s plans for NHS reforms have damaged and destabilised services. So, leave the dysfunctional NHS alone. This monotonous criticism of everything that the Government tries to do must be joy to Labour but hardly the mark of a balanced broadcaster.

Here’s a rather wonderful instance of anti GOP bias from our old pal, Jonny Dymond in which he characterises Obama’s opponents as the Party of “old white America.” Gosh, that sounds almost a tad…racist. It seems that Jonny has concluded that the Democrats have the election won so perhaps Romney, Gingrich and co should just give up now and keep Obama in the White House? No agenda being pursued here, clearly.

I got into a bit of a twitter debate with BBC Presenter Nicky Campbell yesterday. It started off with my tweet that I believed “same sex marriage is an oxymoron if you believe that Marriage is Biblically ordained”. Note the word IF. Anyway, Nicky seemed interested in this and started to pursue the subject of the Bible with me. I am an unapologetic believer in the Bible and Mr Campbell trotted out the usual inanities asked by the Atheist class. I was surprised by how many Atheists seem to follow Nicky and predictably they also wanted to join in the mocking of my Faith. It seems Christianity is all about Dinosaurs and God making the universe in the space it takes to prepare an edition of “The Big Questions”. Anyhow I moved the subject to ISLAM, and in particular the failure of his programme to tackle REAL issues like whether Islam and democracy are compatible. He responded that he has “done it, done it, done it” and so any suggestion that the Big Question does not tackle issues surrounding Islam is invalid. So, I thought I would open this issue up to B-BBC readers – what subjects would you like Nicky Campbell to cover on his programme and do you think that he treats all Faiths equally? Has he fairly dealt with the Islam issue? Please detail your views below – as I want to go back to him with some helpful suggestions. The stage is yours…

And who do we get to advise us?.Craig Bennett from Friends of the Earth!

‘Food security will suffer, insurance premiums go up, a very different country by 2050…a wake up call …serious implications for our livelihoods

‘The BBC bod is clearly alReady persuaded of the need to have a low carbon economy and implement much bolder action …..

‘Does the average person on the street know what the future holds?….How do you persuade politicians to deal with this?’

Of course just what ‘This’ is is still not clear despite the absolute scientific consensus that driving your car to Tescos is killing Africans in climate change caused droughts and wars just as surely as if they were sucking on your exhaust pipe itself.

“Another explanationfor why the ‘right-on’ Lefty liberals in the BBC hate Maggie Thatcher and are proIslam…and it has a nice symmetry…because it also gives them another reasonfor disliking Jewish people even more… Thatcher admired them:

‘Thatcher had no patience for anti-Semitism. “I simply did not understand it,”Thatcher wrote in her memoirs. Indeed, she found “some of [her] closestpolitical friends and associates among Jews.” “In the thirty-three years that Irepresented Finchley [a constituency in London], I never had a Jew come inpoverty and desperation to one of my town meetings… I often wished thatChristians would take closer note of the Jewish emphasis on self-help andacceptance of personal responsibility.” * Aghast that a golf club in her district consistently barred Jews frombecoming members, she publicly attacked her own party members for supportingthe policy. The Jews of Finchley were “her people,” Thatcher remarked –certainly much more so than the wealthy land barons that dominated her party. * In her desire to change and modernize Britain, Thatcher surrounded herselfwith bright Jewish advisors: Keith Joseph, Alfred Sherman, David Young, NigelLawson, Leon Brittan, Victor Rothschild, Malcolm Rifkind, David Wolfson, DavidHart, and others.’

“A talk on sharia and human rights by NSS Council Member Anne Marie Waters’ atQueen Mary University of London was cancelled at the last moment because of anIslamist who made serious threats against everyone there.

… before it started, a man entered the lecture theatre, stood at thefront with a camera and filmed the audience. He then said that he knew whoeveryone was, where they lived and if he heard anything negative about theProphet, he would track them down.”

A search of BBC News site returned no hits for Anne Marie Waters. One canimagine what would have been reported had the aggressor been ‘Christian’ andthe victim Muslim?”

Rather fascinating case leading to an apology from BBC East Midlands for this;

“Back in January 2010, on the second day of the book injunction trial in Lisbon, BBC East Midlands reporter Mike O’ Sullivan asked the former Judiciary Police coordinator Gonçalo Amaral if his book was hurting the McCanns, Amaral’s answer was “Não, fale com os McCann”, which literally translated means “No, speak with the McCanns”.

In what appeared to be a pathetic attempt to smear Amaral’s character, Mike O’Sullivan, who clearly doesn’t know Portuguese, decided to bleep Amaral’s reply (see the above video at 0:30) and broadcast to the world that Amaral had said “F*ck the McCanns”. Though several other UK, Portuguese, Spanish reporters were present at the book banning trial Mike O’Sullivan was the only one who made that (intentional?) assumption. It took 16 months and several complaints to the BBC complaints department, to the PCC, and to Ofcom for the BBC to finally admit that Mike O’ Sullivan was wrong [see bellow] and that Gonçalo Amaral reply was twisted, however no formal apology was issued.”

Oh my. BBC favourite Chuka Umunna seemed almost embarrassed when the issue of RBS CEO Stephen Hester’s rejection of the Bonus to which he was contractually entitled was introduced as “Labour 1, City 0.” The BBC has done everything possible to portray this decision by Mr Hester as some sort of “victory” for Miliband – remarkable when one considers which political party put in place the circumstances which lead to the Bonus concerned! Umunna advances the current war on capitalism and the BBC does nor challenge his spurious commentary. For example, towards the end of the interview, he moans about “other” public sector workers having to take a cut.What about this then, BBC? Some bonus payments more equal than others, perhaps?

American Thinker neatly nails here the Nazi roots that underpin the insidious moonshine about sustainable development. There’s been a seamless evolution pioneered by actual Nazis who escaped the Nurmeberg gallows in the ideas that say we need to get back to nature and stop doing nasty things with fossil fuels. The heirs of these lunatics are now enthroned in the fascist kleptocracy that calls itself the UN. As their latest assault on the enterprise and economic development that has improved the lives of billions who live on the planet, the sinisterly-named High Level Panel on Sustainability has published today a report which, if adopted by the Rio Summit this year, could lead to the systematic dismantling of civilized living, including the ending of all subsidies on fossil fuel. Richard Black, of course, does not see a problem. He sings the report’s praises with unmoderated enthusiasm, rounding it all off with an ecstatic quote from the Stakeholder Forum, a bunch of eco-crazed nutters who are led by one Felix Dodds, who claims his many credentials include “writing for the BBC website”. How very apt.

This is regarding a comment from Dez on an open thread which had already dropped off the main page by the time I noticed it. I haven’t had time to put together the response his comment deserves, and since I think there is an important point to be made here, I’m making it a main post rather than continuing the discussion in the middle of an old thread.

A week ago on a previous Open Thread, John Horne Tooke commented in response to a criticism of BBC reporting by “As I See It” that the BBC’s biased coverage of the US had convinced his college-educated daughter that Republicans “do not believe in science”. It was on Page 7 of this Open Thread (Js-kit/Echo won’t allow linking directly to a comment).

That’s obviously about either Creationsim or Warmism, or both, on which the BBC has form. Basically this is based on the assumption that all Republicans are “climate deniers” and Christians who believe that the Earth is 6000 years old. The BBC has declared that skepticism that human activity is the driving factor in Global Warming is “anti-science”, and so all Republicans get tarred with that epithet, even though there are plenty who buy into Warmism. As for Creationsim, people like Justin Webb and Nicky Campbell (R5L Sept. 8, 2011) have conflated a belief in God as Creator (a very broad term) with the belief that the Earth is only 6000 years old, and suggested that, for example, both Sarah Palin and Rick Perry are unfit for high public office because of it. In the case of JHT’s daughter, she got it from Chris Evans. There’s probably also something there about opposition to embryonic stem-cell research being anti-science. It’s easy for the BBC audience to assume that this is the case for all Republicans, since the Beeboids themselves keep reinforcing that opinion. In short, biased BBC reporting, along with constant partisan attacks from BBC Light Entertainment personalities, forms incorrect opinions.

So I extrapolated from that to a pet peeve of mine, and replied that if JHT’s daughter also thought that the Tea Party movement was driven by crypto-racism, he’d know whom to blame. I was of course referring to the BBC US President, Mark Mardell, along with the fact that the majority of BBC reporting about the Tea Party movement has suggested that opposition to the President was based more on the color of his skin than on any policies. There’s plenty of evidence for this, which I’ll get to in due course. Dez disagreed with me. His comment in full is below the fold.

No! It’s all the fault of Mark Mardell because he told the BBC College of Journalism that; “I’ve been to lots of Tea Party meetings and I honestly don’t think most of them are racist… I think for them it is about the Government spending their money…”

Bascially, Dez’s argument is that since others besides the BBC have pointed to fringe elements and isolated incidents, the BBC cannot be blamed for influencing public opinion on this matter. I won’t put words in his mouth and say that Dez also believes that the Tea Party is driven by racism. I think he does, although I’m happy to be corrected if he chooses to explain himself. Furthermore, he’s also misrepresenting what Mardell actually said at the BBC CoJ.

First of all, let’s discuss who influences public opinion. 50% of the UK public watch the BBC for their news. The BBC has far more influence there than any other television news organization. BBC News Online is Britain’s most popular news website, especially seeing a 109% boost in visitors during the last two years from that desirable 18-24 year old demographic. Nobody has as much influence in online news as the BBC. Outside of that, while Radio 4 has lost some of its audience share, Chris Evans has nearly 9 million listeners. So when he says the Tea Party is racist, he reaches more people at the same time – including JHT’s daughter – than just about anyone else in Britain who isn’t an athlete, royalty, or on X/Strictly whatever. Then there are all the Left-wing comedy programmes and news quizzes, on both radio and tv. The Beeboids at the Today Programme believe they set the agenda for the nation’s news each day. No other media organization has anything like the number of channels or online presence or audience figures of the BBC. It’s not even close. The BBC has by far more influence on public opinion than the rest of them.

The Daily Mail may have passed the New York Times as the top online news source, but how much is that due to celebrity gossip and photos of women in bikinis, never mind the fact that the NY Times has a pay wall which cuts readership short? The Mail got 45.3 million unique visitors in December, Those figures are worldwide, not only British readers. The BBC suggests that’s more about “popular journalism”, big photos, an search engine optimization than the quality of the actual hard news, so it’s difficult to claim that the Mail has more influence on public opinion than the BBC. Sure, the Mail can raise a fuss sometimes and affect a tiny bit of change, as Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross found out. But do 50% of the public get their serious news from the Mail, or do more of the British public read their website for news than BBC? Clearly not.

So I think it’s fair to say that the BBC has more influence on public opinion than any other media outlet. Does the BBC overwhelmingly try to tell you that the Tea Party movement is racist, inspired by racism, or is filled with racists? Yes. The list is seemingly endless.

Jonny Dymond recently made a dishonest report about how hate groups are on the rise because there’s a black President. This was part of the BBC Narrative which began in 2008, that opposition to The Obamessiah can be due only to skin color and not policy.

In one of his earliest blog posts since taking over for Justin Webb, Mark Mardell was openly asking if opposition to the President was driven by racism. He said that, considering how important racism has been in US political history, “it would be strange if it now mattered not a jot”. In his first weeks on the job, Mardell was already ignoring the main economic policy points of the Tea Party movement and Republican opposition to a Democrat President, and focusing instead on a suspicion he has, based on small evidence.

Not long after that, Kevin “Teabagger” Connolly was pushing the same Maureen Dowd article from the NY Times that Mardell waas. In that same post, David Vance also tells us about Gavin Essler in the Daily Mail scowling at those Hitler signs, and whipping up fear that someone might assassinate the President. So even if the Mail does have a negative influence on the public, we can partly blame Beeboids for that, too.

There have been plenty of comments on this blog about Richard Bacon and Victoria Derbyshire pushing this same Narrative, never mind all those edgy comedians who make a good living working the Left-wing tropes.

The next issue is whether or not Dez is correct that the outliers his examples highlight are enough to convince someone that the Tea Party movement is, in fact, racist. I’ve spent a lot of time on this blog trying to show that, contrary to BBC reporting, the movement is actually driven by people’s unhappiness with the President’s and the Democrats’ economic policies, and there’s no need to get into all that here.

The short answer is that every large gathering and movement is going to have its parasitical fringe element, people who ride the coat tails of the larger movement to push their own issues. It’s become a cliché that every Left-wing protest march will feature someone with a “Free Palestine” sign or a “Troops out of Iraq” placard or a hoodie with that “A” for Anarchy symbol, regardless of the issue of the day. But we don’t say that the student riots protests against tuition fees were driven by support for the Palestinian cause. The same thing goes for Right-wing gatherings and pro-life supporters or similar. So there are obviously going to be some racists somewhere who see protests against the President as an opportunity to bare their own racist grievances. It can’t be helped. Hell, there might even be people who actually are racist, but are also legitimately concerned about the destructive economic policies.

However, I’d say that it’s impossible for a grassroots movement which grew into a national phenomenon to be largely driven by racism if Herman Cain and Col. Allen West got so much support from them. The second Tea Party protest I attended back in 2009 was hosted by a black man. And how racist can people be who vote for Bobby Jindal or Marco Rubio? Or are there actual racists who hate black people but have no problem with Indians or Hispanics?

But I think it would me more informative to instead answer a question with a question.

If we’re supposed to accept that the Tea Party movement is driven by racism based on a few outliers and isolated incidents, would Mardell and Connolly and John Horne Tooke’s daugher and Dez equally say that the Occupy Wall St. movement is driven by anti-Semitism if I provided several examples? Would they do what we’re so often instructed not to about Muslims and extremism or young black men and crime, and stain the majority for the behavior of the few? Would, then, the following be enough evidence to declare that anti-Jewish sentiment does matter a jot in the Occupy movement:

Pete Sutherland traveled to Zuccotti Park all the way from Georgia Friday, shivering as he wielded a handmade sign that read, “The Reason the Arabs Hate Us.”
“Jews are the smartest people in the world,” said Sutherland, 79. Not in a good way.
“They control the media.”
But no one tells the truth about the Hebrew people, as he sees it, because “the media doesn’t want to commit suicide by losing the Jewish advertisers.’’
“I’m not anti-Semitic,” he finished.

The New York Times thought the Occupy movement was getting such a bad reputation that they went out to make a story defending them. The Times instructs us not to smear the majority for the acts of a few.

A quick sampling of the anti-Semitism on display among the Occupy Wall Street set yields the flamboyant and aggressive protester who yells,“You’re a bum, Jew” at his yarmulke-wearing interlocutor; the conspiracy theorist who laments that “Jewish money controls American politics,” and warns the Russians not to let the Jews take over Russia too; and the self-described Nazi with the swastika tattoo who regrets that America has been handed over to “other people.” Ah, people power.

I could go on. So do we declare that the Occupy movement is mainly anti-Semitic, or that it’s fair for people to get that idea? I didn’t say so after my encounter with the Occupiers at Zuccotti. In fact, I said that, despite the videos I’d seen and reports I’d read, I hadn’t seen any real anti-Semitism there, and so wouldn’t declare the entire movement tainted. Which brings me to my final point: Dez’s misrepresentation of Mardell’s CoJ appearance and misunderstanding and mischaracterization of my comment.

You can watch Mardell speak for himself here. (@ around 54:20 if the link isn’t direct)

Mardell mocks a Southern white woman while confirming his off-camera colleague’s opinion that racism was certainly a factor in the 2008 election. “You knew exactly what it was,” he chortles. He then says that he doesn’t think “most” of the people at Tea Party protests he’s been to are racists. “Certainly not in a straightforward sense.” Dez conveniently elided that bit. Which leads to his error about what I said. Mardell isn’t saying that most of us aren’t racists, he’s saying that it’s there underneath the surface of the economic issues. “Deeper than that, it’s about the Government spending their money on people who are not like them.” Dez conveniently elided that bit as well. Dishonesty? Or a simple mistake? Only Dez can tell us.

I said at the time, and have repeated many times since, that Mardell believes the Tea Party movement to be driven by crypto-racism. His own words tell you so. Now, I’m not blaming Mardell’s appearance at the CoJ for people being misinformed. That’s a misunderstanding on Dez’s part. What I am saying is that Mardell, the BBC’s top man in the US, believes it to be true, and that it influences his and his fellow Beeboids’ reporting. The question from his colleague presupposes that racism is a factor, and Mardell confirms it. This tells us the editorial opinion of and the conventional wisdom at the BBC, which informs all their reporting on the issue. In other words, they already thought that, long before Mardell’s appearance at the BBC CoJ. This is a problem. Aside from the smear factor, it also causes them to ignore or play down the real economic issues behind the opposition to the President’s and the Democrats’ agenda. Mardell can acknowledge that excessive government spending is a concern, but deep down it’s driven by racism. Even when writing about Herman Cain’s popularity, he actually thinks it’s important to ask if the man’s black skin would “bother any right-wingers”. So Dez’s portrayal of Mardell is absolutely false.

Of course there’s no memo going out telling everyone to push the racism angle or anything. It’s just groupthink, reinforced from the top. They read it in the Washington Post and the New York Times and the HuffingtonPost, and they hear it from their Left-wing associates and friends, and laugh at it with their favorite Left-wing comedians. It’s visceral, and is spread throughout the BBC. That’s why you hear it not only from Mardell and Dymond, but from Bacon and Campbell and all the rest of them.

And that’s why 50% of the public who watch BBC News, as well as heavens knows how many more who rely on BBC News Online – who combined make up the majority of the population – think the Tea Party movement is driven by crypto-racism.

Nicky Campbell: For the first time MPs on the Education Select Committee want you to provide the questions when they go head-to head with Michael Gove next Tuesday. They’re asking for suggestions via Twitter. LOL. And it’s going to be with the hashtag “AskGove”. The Conservative MP Graham Stuart is the chair of the Education Committee. Good morning.

Graham Stuart: Good morning, Nicky.

Nicky Campbell: Tell us a little bit more about this, getting other people to do your hard work for you. Great idea – you can go and have lunch in your subsidised canteen. [Smug chortle]

Graham Stuart: Thanks for that low remark. You of course struggle by on a fraction of what MPs are paid Nicky so it’s nice to have someone like you standing up for low earners…

Nicky Campbell: Absolutely, well said!

Graham Stuart: … and the unsubsidised while working for the BBC, but never mind – we won’t worry about your hypocrisy.

After that put-down Campbell steered clear of the wisecracks and concentrated on the topic at hand.